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...(TIFF) for his new film, Phil the Alien. Now liked first-time director Stefaniuk, and it liked his movie--an anarchic, low-budget comedy about an alcoholic space alien (named Phil and played by Stefaniuk with the same startled bewilderment) who lands in Northern Ontario.
Phil is variously befriended by drunken hosers, betrayed by "a super-intelligent beaver" (voiced by SCTV alumni Joe Flaherty) and is saved by jail-house religion. Meanwhile, over at the Top Secret American UFO Base, located under Niagara Falls, The General (John Kapelos) has discovered Phil and sends Jones (played with manic intensity by Bruce Hunter) to eliminate him. Throw in beautiful Quebecoise assassin (Nicole De Boer), a bartender called "Wolf" (Graham Greene), assorted cameos by the likes of Sean Cullen and Canadian Idol Ryan Malcolm and the music of Neil Young and Rush, and you have the makings of a Canadian hoser classic in the tradition of Strange Brew. Now described Stefaniuk as the "poster boy for new Canadian cinema at the film fest" and declared that Phil the Alien heralded a "Canadian comic renaissance."
Geoff Pevere, the influential film critic at the Toronto Star, likewise raved about the film: "This is highly funny stuff in a proudly asinine Canadian tradition." Guy Dixon of Toronto's The Globe and Mail was only slightly less laudatory, giving the film three stars out of four and writing, "those who find Kids in the Hall funny and endearingly Canadian will love this film." Before TIFF was over, the indie flick that had become the talk of the festival had landed a Canadian distribution deal with Lions Gate Films.
Variety, however, was buying none of the Canuck buzz and publicity. It panned the movie. "The sort of Canadian...
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